Anthony Ha

Anthony Ha is a writer at TechCrunch, where he covers media and advertising. Previously, he worked as a tech writer at Adweek, a senior editor at the tech blog VentureBeat, and a local government reporter at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in Brooklyn.

Latest from Anthony Ha

I don’t want to become the publicity arm for every tech organization throwing a contest or giveaway, but once in a while, something comes along that seems like a perfect fit for a big chunk of TechCrunch readers. For example: i/o Ventures, the co-working space and startup incubator based in the Mission District (that’s San Francisco’s best neighborhood, for those of you not… Read More

ChoicePass is bringing its corporate perk management platform to smartphones starting today, with the launch of its Android app.
Co-founder Kyle Hui says his goal is to “make HR sexy again.” Specifically that means helping small companies participate in perks programs that they couldn’t afford on their own, while moving larger companies’ perks into the cloud, freeing… Read More

You’ve probably heard the complaint that MTV has forgotten its music video roots and spends too much time on reality television. Heck, you may have said something similar yourself. Well, for its third O Music Awards (an “event that celebrates and honors the artists, fans and innovators impacting digital music culture”), MTV combining elements of both — it’s an… Read More

BoomStartup, an incubator based in Salt Lake City, Utah, just announced the startups participating in its third annual session.
The program runs from May to August. Participating companies get $20,000 in seed capital and $80,000 worth of infrastructure, office space, and services from companies like Microsoft, PayPal, and Rackspace. Co-managing partner Robb Kunz places a big emphasis… Read More

During the conference call this afternoon for their first quarter earnings, LinkedIn executives boasted about the impressive mobile growth they’re seeing. In the last week of March, the company says mobile accounted for 22 percent of unique visitors, up 8 percent from the same period last year.
And although he wouldn’t share any numbers, CEO Jeff Weiner said adoption of the… Read More

One of the most frustrating online experiences for me is trying to track down a web page or tweet that I saw a few days ago. If I’m lucky, I bookmarked the page or favorited the tweet, but most of the time I haven’t, and so I can only sit there and fume.
So basically, a startup called Archify is the answer to my prayers. It’s a browser plugin that tracks every website you… Read More

The Discovery Channel is announcing that it has acquired online video company Revision3, as reported in AllThingsD.
My boss Eric Eldon wrote on Monday night that a deal was in the works, with a price between $30 million and $40 million. Looks like he was right: Discovery isn’t releasing the terms, but AllThingsD is also hearing that the price was $30 million. Revision3 had raised $10… Read More

The makers of traffic app Waze are the latest company wanting to go beyond the phone and integrate more deeply with car hardware.
It’s a natural move — if you use Waze, you use it when you’re driving. However, the whole dealmaking and integration process with automakers is long and complicated, so as a first step, Waze is looking at the “aftermarket” of devices… Read More

Vibrant Media is probably best-known for its in-text advertising, but it has been expanding its lineup of ad units. The latest edition is something it’s calling Vibrant Lightbox Video.
Vibrant already offered video ads, but a spokesperson tells me there are a number of new pieces here. For one thing, it’s using Vibrant’s Lightbox Image technology, which identifies… Read More

Why is everyone trying so hard to reinvent the hiring process? Maybe because referrals and recommendations (still the main way people get jobs) remain incredibly old-school. Sure, there are LinkedIn recommendations, but does anyone trust those? (God, I hope not, since I have zero.) It’s really all about phone calls and emails.
Now a startup called Recmnd.Me is unveiling a new… Read More

It looks like always-pivoting Seesmic is wrapping up off its latest shift, from the CRM business to social posting apps.
Back in March, the company laid off half its staff to pursue the new direction (which is really a return to one of its old strategies), but there weren’t many details about the transition. Today, Seesmic announced that it has reached an agreement with enterprise… Read More

Ad network engage:BDR has launched a new platform for real-time bidding that it’s calling First Impression.
Real-time bidding is already a big part of the online advertising landscape, but Vice President of Platforms Nick Lynch says engage:BDR is bringing a different approach to the problem. Read More

As the Republican primaries wrap up and we head into the Obama vs. Romney stage of the presidential campaign, Stitcher has updated its talk radio app with an Election Center where anyone can track the latest political news.
It seems pretty natural for any news-focused app to add an election center, but CEO Noah Shanok says it’s a particularly good fit for Stitcher’s audience, of… Read More

BrandYourself, a startup offering a cheap and easy approach to managing your Google results, has added a new feature to answer one of those burning questions: Who are the people Googling me?
To be clear, it’s not actually plugging in to Google and sending you an alert every single time someone enters your name. Instead, it’s revealing data about who’s visiting your… Read More

A new startup launching today called eVr1 sits at the intersection between the digital and physical worlds.
In the words of co-founder Brandon Peele, eVr1 has tried to answer the question, “What does it mean to be human being in the context of 16 gigs?” So the team selected what it saw as the most important aspects of human knowledge and literature — the entirety of… Read More

I recently wrote about news gamification app Scoople, and today, the company is releasing a new version with improved social interaction.
When you use Scoople, you read news stories (usually aggregated by Scoople from multiple articles) then fill out an associated poll. You can enter your own opinion and also predict the opinion of the larger community — people who do the best are… Read More

Get Satisfaction was built around the importance of community to businesses. Now, with the launch of a new product called Get Satisfaction Engage, it wants to make those communities embeddable anywhere.
Basically, Engage is a new architecture for Get Satisfaction widgets, turning them into customizable versions of a company’s Get Satisfaction community. People can browse the new… Read More

uberVU already offers a dashboard for monitoring social media conversations about your company, but CEO Mark Pascarella and founder/Chief Product Officer Vladimir Oane says it’s time to help brands find the crucial signals in the social media noise. So they’re launching a new feature today called, predictably, uberVU Signals.
Nowadays, whenever I meet with a social media… Read More

Dozens of startups have launched in the past few years claiming to fix the broken recruiting and hiring process. One of them, Readyforce, has already signed up some well-known startups with a relatively straightforward and compelling idea, and it’s opening up its beta test today.
When it comes to finding the right job applicant, CEO Alex Mooradian says that “it’s all… Read More

Has The Washington Post acquired Digg, as reported in The Next Web? Sort of.
We’re hearing from multiple sources that the Post has hired the Digg team, but is not acquiring the site or the technology. In other words, this is a talent acquisition, and in fact Digg properties, patents, and assets are still for sale. Read More